Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living

Pasta With Chorizo, Swiss Chard And Parmesan Cream Sauce

Posted March 4, 2012

Pick up some Swiss chard and chorizo from your local farmers market for this dish. It will warm you up in these cold winter months.

Photo: Sarah Kaiser

This dish turned out to be delicious with just the right balance of greens, spicy sausage and cream.

I don’t know about you, but I never seem to be able to cook the proper balance between pasta and red sauce. I always end up with too much of one or the other, unsure what to do with my leftover ingredients.

This dish was first inspired by a bit of leftover gluten-free rice pasta that I made a few nights ago. It’s a perfect dish and can be thrown together in about 15 minutes, with whatever veggies, meat and cheese you happen to have around.

I got a chance to use up my leftover rotini, a bit of onion, Parmesan cheese and Swiss chard. I use real butter and whole milk.

Pasta With Chorizo, Swiss Chard And Parmesan Cream Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoonsbutter

2 tablespoonsflour

2 cupswhole milk

1/2 cupParmesan cheese

1/4 cupchopped onion

1/4 cupchopped red Swiss chard

1/4 poundchorizo sausage

2 cupscooked pasta

Cooking Directions

For the cream sauce, melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour until combined and bubbly. (Be careful not to burn the butter.) Slowly pour the milk into the pan, whisking and heating as you pour. The sauce will thicken as the milk and butter-flour mixture combine. Set aside the finished cream sauce and start on the pasta mixture.

Sauté the onion and chorizo in a pan until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the chard, and allow it to heat through. Chard doesn’t require much cooking, so it should be added right before the pasta.

Add the cooked pasta. When warm, pour cream sauce over this mixture until covered. The balance of pasta to cream sauce might not be perfect, but that just means you can cook up a little more pasta to have the meal again.

Sarah Kaiser is a student-turned-townie living in Bloomington, Indiana. A social media specialist at Solution Tree, she spends her days tweeting and her nights foraging at the local summer market for new tastes and flavors. And occasionally rocking out on the ukulele.

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